Archive - April 2015

1
Peace Corps Volunteers Out in the Cold in Tropical Panamà
2
The Man Who Made the Masters, Part I
3
The Man Who Made the Masters, Part II
4
The Man Who Made the Masters, Part III
5
The Man Who Made the Masters (Conclusion)
6
Rwanda PCV David Ripley Died of Aneurysm While on Vacation in Tanzania
7
A Writer Writes: “Hemingway in Africa” by Geri Critchley (Senegal)
8
PCV David Ripley Dies in Tanzania
9
Were PCVs Used as Test Animals for Meflouine?
10
Summer Books From Two Fine RPCV Writers

Peace Corps Volunteers Out in the Cold in Tropical Panamà

The President arrived in Panamà City this Thursday evening for the Seventh Summit of the Americas. It is being held in Panamà City this 10th and 11th. Tonight, Thursday, the 9th, a Reception was held at the Westin Playa Bonita for the Embassy personnel and their families, but not the Embassy local hires or ‘low level’ US employees. The affair was also closed to the Press and all Peace Corps Volunteers. Currently there are approximately 209 PCVs working in Panamà, and since 1963 over 2,370 had served there as English teachers, environmental health, environmental conservation and in agriculture. My guess is that the Secret Service wanted to control the number of guests, therefore, no PCVs, but given the Secret Service agents behavior of late, I would have thought they might invite the Peace Corps just to ‘hit’ on some of the women. The Summits of the Americas are institutionalized gatherings . . .

Read More

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part I

The Man Who Made the Masters This is the first in a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne FROM THE HILLSIDE AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL one looks into a natural amphitheater and across a landscape of interlacing fairways and greens, golden sand and blue-green stately pines. The old Berckman’s nursery fills smooth valleys and soft hills to the far edges of Amen Corner with a maze of color: azalea, dogwood, and redbud. In so many ways, this ancient acreage and southern plantation club house still has the look, code and culture of those antebellum times. It is, also, a very modern golf course, as architect Robert Trent Jones defined it in The Complete Golfer. Jones wrote, “The Augusta National is the epitome of the type of course which appeals most keenly to the . . .

Read More

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part II

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part II This is the second part of a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne CLIFFORD ROBERTS WAS BORN IN MORNING SUN, Iowa, in 1894 and reared in small towns in Iowa and Texas. He never attended college and didn’t graduate from high school. He left in the ninth grade after a fight with the principal. His family life was troubled; his father couldn’t keep a job; his mother was suicidal. And yet Roberts became one of the most iconic figures in the world of golf. At the age of 19, Roberts, a traveling salesman of men’s suits, was on the road in the Midwest when he heard his mother had taken her own life. “It was a tragic event,” writes Steve Eubanks in his . . .

Read More

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part III

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part III By John Coyne CLIFFORD ROBERTS IS OFTEN REMEMBERED (and quoted) for saying about Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament, “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white and caddies will be black.” Today, however, it is difficult to find an African-American caddie looping at the Masters as all the pros (and amateurs) bring their own caddies, and they are, almost exclusively, Caucasian. (The first full-time white Augusta National caddie, around 1986, was Tripp Bowden who writes about it in his book Freddie & Me, Augusta National Legendary Caddy Master). In a 1997 article in Sports Illustrated  Rick Reilly would write, “Someday Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, a mixed-race kid with a middle-class background who grew up on a municipal course in the sprawl of Los Angeles, may be hailed as the greatest golfer who ever lived, but it’s likely that his . . .

Read More

The Man Who Made the Masters (Conclusion)

The Man Who Made the Masters (Conclusion) This is the final part of a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne ONE MIGHT SAY SUICIDE RAN in Clifford Roberts’ family. His mother, suffering from back pains and depression, killed herself with a shotgun in 1913, and his father, who had health issues of his own, in 1921 walked in front of a train and was killed. No note was left, but it had the markings of another family suicide. Now how would Clifford end his life? Roberts’s final day is well told in David Owen’s book, The Making of the Masters, a history of Augusta National written with the help and cooperation of the club, to combat negative accounts of life at Augusta National. Owen, a New Yorker staff writer, gives a . . .

Read More

Rwanda PCV David Ripley Died of Aneurysm While on Vacation in Tanzania

David Ripley, a PCV working in Rwanda, died Tuesday from an aneurysm, his father, Bruce Ripley, said Saturday. “It was a weak spot in his arteries,” he said. “It was out of clear blue.” The news came to a shock to the family, his father said. David had never demonstrated issues with his heart. The family and friends are now awaiting the arrival of David’s girlfriend, another PCV in Rwanda, and a representative from the Peace Corps from HQ in Washington, to make final memorial services. The service will be this coming Saturday. The family has been overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support from family, friends and the Peace Corps Community. “He’s touched so many lives,” Bruce Ripley said of his son. “What he accomplished in five to seven months….he made all his friends dream bigger.” The Peace Corps has set up the David Ripley Memorial Fund. Bruce . . .

Read More

A Writer Writes: “Hemingway in Africa” by Geri Critchley (Senegal)

Hemingway in Africa • By Geri Critchley (Senegal 1971-72) WHEN I EMBARKED on my travels to Africa, I had no intention of encountering Ernest Hemingway. However, while trying to get money out of a non-functioning ATM in Moshi, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, I met a travel agent who offered to somehow use his agency as an ATM so I could pay a Mt Kilimanjaro guide. In the middle of the transaction, abruptly changing focus, he told me that he had attended St Ursula’s boarding school nearby in Moshi Village with Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter Edwina, daughter of Hemingway’s son Patrick. He continued to tell me he is still in touch with Edwina who used to live in Florida but moved to Montana and that she has the rights to Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Of course he now had my attention; I told him I was interested in learning more. He must have . . .

Read More

PCV David Ripley Dies in Tanzania

The Peace Corps Mourns the Loss of Volunteer David Ripley WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2, 2015 – Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet is saddened to confirm the death of Peace Corps volunteer David Ripley. David, 29, passed away while visiting Tanzania on March 31, 2015. “David was a deeply compassionate and empathetic person, which in turn made him an extraordinary Peace Corps volunteer,” Hessler-Radelet said. “He was committed to putting his experience to work improving the lives of those in his community of service, and was seen as a leader among his fellow volunteers. We are devastated by his loss, and the thoughts and prayers of the entire Peace Corps family are with the Ripley family during this difficult time.” A native of Palmetto, Fla., David served as a health volunteer in Rwanda. He worked at community health centers and read books to children regularly at the Kigali Reading Center. He . . .

Read More

Were PCVs Used as Test Animals for Meflouine?

A comment on the WSJ Law Blog: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/03/27/former-peace-corps-volunteers-sues-over-malaria-drug/ Commander Bill Manofsky USN(ret) wrote this comment in the Wall Street Journal following the article that appeared about RPCV Sara Thompson (Burkina Faso 2010-12) Sueing The Peace Corps Over Malaria Drug Mefloquine was invented by the US Army at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) during the Vietnam War. For a history of how poorly this was handled, do a Google search for the full text version of the article “A lesson learnt: the rise and fall of Lariam and Halfan” written by Dr. Ashley Croft, former infectious disease specialist for the British military and their expert on Lariam.
The drug was approved by the FDA as a treatment for malaria in 1976 and as a prophylaxis in 1989. In both situations, the safety trials were skipped. The 1989 testing was performed by the CDC on healthy Peace Corps volunteers. The US Army . . .

Read More

Summer Books From Two Fine RPCV Writers

Karl Luntta (Botswana 1978-80) A swimming pool in the Kalahari Desert, the ice skates of a boy in a wheelchair, and a midnight train ride in the cool African night form the backdrop of the eight diverse stories in Swimming. Some of the stories take place in Africa, others in the United States, but in all of them, the characters confront cultural and racial differences, both historically and in the present. In “A Virgin Twice,” an American teaching in Botswana struggles to understand a village’s response to a violent assault. In “Jeff Call Beth,” a white American father attempts to connect with the daughter he left behind in Africa. And in the title story, “Swimming,” a Danish expatriate dying of cancer decides to build an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the Kalahari Desert. All of these characters are clinging to emotional survival in a complex world, confronted by a moment or element . . .

Read More

Copyright © 2022. Peace Corps Worldwide.